The land of the long white cloud.

New Zealand is not called ‘The Land of the Long WhiteCloud’ for nothing.  When you fly into New Zealand, the first thing you see is cloud, a long white cloud marking the land. And flying in on Tuesday, sure enough, right along the North Island and over Mount Egmont, there was the cloud.

New Zealand is made up of two main islands, both long and narrow with a spine of mountains running from the south of the south island to midway up the north island and into the sea. The country is basically built on a huge fault line in the earth, on the ‘ring of fire’ tectonic plate, and also known as ‘The Shaky Isles’, because New Zealand experiences many earthquakes.

Yesterday we drove from Masterton to Napier, along the east side of the main ranges. There were some interesting cloud formations along the ranges so I have put a couple here.

Cloud formation over the ranges east of Woodville.

We were also interested to see the expansion of the Woodville wind farm. There are many more of these wind turbines now. I’m not sure how much power they get off these, but it must be a bit.

 The rivers along the east of New Zealand are almost dry. We have been amazed to see what is normally a reasonably sized river practically non existent. Another sign of the drought.

The Tukituki river outside Waipukurau, practically non existent.

It is also very very dry along this way. Most of the North Island is now drought declared, and they say this is going to cost the country lots of money in lost milk etc. Production is falling and farmers are using their winter feed now. The short term forecast is for more dry weather although the long term is for rain during autum.  It is really interesting to listen to the radio and see the major differences. In New Zealand, rural matters predominate. In Australia, farming is important, but mining is high on the list of topics, along with satisfaction or dissatisfaction with how the country is being run.

It's pretty dry out here!

Moving from place to place and from state to state, it's interesting to see the ways the different seasons unfold.

We had a very wet early winter here on the Gold Coast, and now it is nearly spring, we have gone about a month without a drop of rain and everything is getting really dry. With some strong northly winds, we are having fire warnings in the south east, especially around Ipswich way. The whole south east is drying out, so I hope we are not in for a bad fire season round this way.

We know from living here some years ago that the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast can get some pretty severe storms. Around October/November, most afternoons, a thunder storm will build and pass through. These are good for the ground, apart from the fact that lightning combines with the raindrops to provide good fertilising for the soil, the showers are often pretty heavy but short, so the gardens get a good drop of rain, and then the sun comes out again not long after.

But the thing that really impresses me, coming from the green, cooler, wetter NZ, is the grass and native plants around here. They have the ability to withstand the drought conditions with style. Often in the summer there are watering restrictions round this area, so no one can water their lawns. And in this house sit with an acre to water, it would be out of the question anyway. (The owners have lots of pots which we water, but the general garden usually waits for the rain.)  But the grass is amazing. So many times I have seen the grass wither during the summer, go dry, actually go quite crunchy underfoot, and then appear to completely die. It can be like that for quite a while. If the storms come regularly, its not so bad, they get a drink often, but if the storms don't drop water on your little patch of land, the grass can appear to be absolutely beyond help.

And then it rains, maybe for a day or two, or maybe lots of showers, and all of a sudden in just a few days, its back. You can almost see the green returning as you watch it, and before you know it, your lawn is back. Its the same with the trees, especially the gum trees, that look half dead when they go without water for a long time, but give them the rain, and they are back, good as new. These types of grass and trees must have wonderful self preservation capabilites built into them for survival. Amazing really.